S E H R A II : Polynomial

[Sehra’s significance to Arabs is understandable, their lives after all revolved around the desert. But sehra’s magic to us is no less significant. Perhaps centuries of contact with Arabs and their literature allowed it to grow on us with similar sense of foreboding and tilism. Sehra means same to Arabs as ocean means to seafarers. Both are vast monolithic spaces; enigmatic, risk-prone, adventurous and tantalizingly mysterious, short on drinking water. Sehra is parched, lifeless and inanimate yet one of the most enduring tales of love (Laila & Majnu) was played out in its inhospitable sands. At more spiritual level its monolithic space holds most fascinating conundrums of life.]

Polynomial

We had on our right Mr.Wahab as our neighbor, a house teeming with little children. If it hadn’t been the army cantonment and its ethos of strict secularism, that family would have reinforced my stereo typing of Muslims permanently but thankfully people in cantonment were not identified by their religion or their cast but just by their name. It isn’t that Mr.Wahab wore shervani and fluffy cap but the house teemed with little children and air saturated with the stink of dried urine. The most enduring image of that house is of a kid roaming around naked waist down with his peanut sized bandaged penis dangling like a pendulum. When I asked Junaid, their eldest son, what’s wrong with his brother he cringed in extreme embarrassment. Back then, mothers covered little children’s chest for fear of them catching cold but it was fine for little kids to move around the neighborhood naked waist down. I have had very few Muslim friends, perhaps because they are fewer in number, but they have always added a strange kind of intensity in relationships. May be this is because of xenophobia borne out of insecurity of a minority. First they just don’t trust you but once they do they do so whole-heartedly. Junaid was my buddy. On our left, Harpal Singh lived with his family. Poly, his daughter was my age, laconic and coy. Her younger brother, I don’t even remember his name, always wore pajama. Since kids do a lot of running and pajamas aren’t exactly conducive to running, I hated him. I don’t think there is a thing called platonic love, its plain sexual infatuation. If at all there is platonic love it must be between two little kids. Poly’s proximity was always soft, soothing and blissful. Later in college when I read about polynomials in Math class. it reminded me of her, lithe and supple. Poly wasn’t her name, I realized this much later when I visited her one last time as a college student in Meerut. She was still laconic and coy. When her mother called her Po’lli, I realized that her name was Po’lli a distorted version of Bholi due to Punjabi folk’s tendency to convert B’s into P’s as in ‘paadshah’. When I asked her if she still remembered those days in Secundrabad, she didn’t look at me, but said, “Yes. Of course!” She made my day. I guess, I need to revisit my thoughts on platonic love.